December 1, 2010
3:00 -5:00 p.m.
ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES________________________________________________
ROLL CALL
Present:
John Bardo, Heidi Buchanan, David Claxton, Chris Cooper, Beverly Collins, Cheryl Daly,
Christopher Hoyt, Luther Jones, Rebecca Lasher, Ron Mau, David McCord, Erin McNelis, Kadie
Otto, Jane Perlmutter, Malcolm Powell, Bill Richmond, Philip Sanger, Barbara St. John, Linda
Stanford, Vicki Szabo, Ben Tholkes, Laura Wright
Members with Proxies:
Catherine Carter, Elizabeth Heffelfinger, David Hudson, Leroy Kauffman, Elizabeth McRae, Chuck
Tucker, Cheryl Waters-Tormey
Members absent: Erin Tapley
Recorder:
Ann Green
APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES____________________________________________________
Motion:
Motion was made and seconded to approve the minutes of the Faculty Senate meeting of October 27,
2010 and November 4, 2010.
EXTERNAL REPORTS____________________________________________________________
Faculty Assembly/David Claxton:
David reported that the Faculty Assembly was held November 12th and all three WCU representatives attended. The topics of discussion were the funding model, budget and program elimination. It was mentioned that Chancellor Bardo and other chancellors are looking into if the funding model is the best way to approach the funding model. There is a group looking across the
UNC system to see what it would mean if programs are eliminated, including what would tenure mean. If you are tenured at your university and your college, or program is gone and you’re eligible to teach at another program on your campus, would you have a job? They also discussed three primary things: 1. Advising for undergraduates, 2. Registrar’s issue to see if we had similar processes in place across the university system in terms of course loads, drop adds and things of this nature, and
3. Financial Aid and the effects on students. These topics were important in terms of student retention and if the funding model is going to be based on student retention, then we need to be sure these things are working well.
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Erin added that the Registrar and Financial Aid are more related than one might expect in that the minimum requirements for financial aid may be set to be minimum requirements for academic status.
David added that one important thing he picked up is that each semester they are asked to report the first and second week attendance rates and that faculty may not realize how important those are. If a student shows up even once or twice they are eligible for some financial aid. If there is no record, they ever attended class; it is possible they may ask that all their financial aid be refunded. Therefore, it is to the students’ advantage that we report the first week’s attendance.
SGA/Daniel Dorsey:
Erin reported for Daniel Dorsey. SGA passed a resolution for Senate to consider that would allow long boarding (long skateboarding). The resolution is a proposal that skateboarding be allowed to return to campus as a means of transportation.
Dr. Bardo conveyed that we have never allowed skateboarding on campus. They gladly allow in line skates. If you wear in line skates you break your own neck and nobody else’s. We have had issues over the years of skateboarders losing control of their skateboards and when they do, it shoots out like a missile and hits other people and causes injury. That is the entire issue. It is that if you lose control of a skateboard in a crowd, you will likely injure other people.
This topic will be passed on to Faculty Affairs for further discussion.
Staff Senate/William Frady:
Report will be given later in the meeting.
General Education Task Force/Bruce Henderson:
The task force update is that they have reviewed over 100 General Ed programs at mostly other state universities. They haven’t gotten into the analysis, but have the data. They invited all the colleges to provide information on what their view of general education is and they have received statements from most of the deans. They have conducted three public forums and got a wide variety of input.
They shared a lot of readings – everything from the Lumina Report to the Honor’s Path, a number of research papers and others things. They have reviewed the Liberal Studies Assessment Report that came from the current liberal studies plan and the action plan in response to SACS types of concerns.
The task force has developed a set of general principles that they are nearly ready to approve. Their immediate to-do list includes getting information from outside agencies. They won’t be doing this as a committee, but will ask programs that have accreditation reports or advisory committees that can provide them with some of this information. They will also request information from SAIs on the liberal studies courses to determine what they can from them. They are seriously considering doing a survey of WCU faculty.
Comment: You said that you had settled on some principles. What do you mean?
Response: They are general principles about things that we can agree on as a group about the way general education should be at Western. For example, general education should be general for all students on campus; the most appropriate faculty should be providing the general education courses…things like this. We are hoping these will provide us with a base as we get into more gritty guidelines.
All work that the task force has done is expected to be on the H drive. There is a public folder for the general education task force.
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Comment: What about information from students?
Response, Yes, we invited the students to the forums and no one came, but that is why we are going to the SAI data…one particular thing that has come up as an issue is challenge…the need for greater challenge in courses.
Comment: There has been a discussion at the SGA level that you may want to inquire into.
Comment: That would be great. We’ll take any information that anyone has.
Comment: …I have a copy of the Senate resolution from last year and that is what we have been going on and there is a fair amount of specificity for awhile in the resolution and then we get to where we have heard various concerns from all the groups and then you we get to where, I’m not sure what paragraph this comes from but after we have heard all the concerns we will “deliberate on how best to address these concerns” and then in another paragraph, “the final outcome of this review will meet the desired general education needs of the various colleges and finally will develop a series of general education objectives”. This does not explicitly tell us to design a new general education program.
However, the assumption has been that that was the intent. The committee wants me to make sure that that is the intent of the Senate before we get too far along. We are quite willing to do, but we want to know that that was the intent of the resolution and that we are not going beyond the intent of the Senate.
Comment: So, the question is, was the task force asked to come up with a new proposal?
Response: Yes…it would have to go through the usual approval process, but the question is, “are we to go all the way to not only developing a program, but designing an implementation plan for the program. That’s going all the way.
Comment: If you look at the resolution, it says all our concerns, reach a conclusion on our concerns, then identify outcomes, then it kind of dies off. The question is after you’ve done outcome then should you look at what a proposed program to fit those outcomes should be and present to the Senate as a package.
Comment: We also, one thing that we talked about is that we would do the initial leg work and gather the data and discuss the data, then we would turn the task over to another group of people but we wonder what sense that would actually make having already compiled all this information and discussed it.
Comment: That’s exactly what I was going to say we debated long and hard about the formation of the task force, it got a lot of attention in the Senate. The idea of representation was really argued out, so I don’t know that it makes any sense to form another task force for the same purpose…so I would applaud you all doing it as long as you are willing to do it and taking it all the way to the final recommendation of the program.
Comment: That’s the feeling of the task force.
Comment: This is a clarification; we didn’t see it as needing a vote. Is there anybody who is not in favor of having the same task force continue to fruition to something that’s more of a final package?
It was confirmed that the Senate would like the task force to continue to a proposed program and an implementation plan.
Bruce further commented that one of the things they are very cognizant of is the need for a strong assessment component to this plan. That will be one of the major parts of the implementation of the program.
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Report from Chancellor Bardo:
Dr. Bardo stated there are two issues that he would like to talk about and that he is here for questions more than anything. The first topic discussed was performance based budgeting. He was very uncomfortable with the original model that was put out and looked in some detail into the issue of retention. He found that the percent of students on need based financial aid was a very strong predictor of retention rate. Low income students drop out of school more frequently than students that are not low income. This is true even if their need as defined by federal financial aid is met. The issue is if your need is met, it pays for your college, but it does nothing for your family beyond that.
Carrying this analysis on they looked at the National Center for Educational Statistics and data from
405 colleges, universities and community colleges and found that the best predictor of dropping out related to need was whether or not you got institutional need based aid. If you look at the way aid is given, you get Pell Grants first, scholarships, then loans, and then institutions fill in with whatever is left. Institutional aid is the last aid given. Dr. Bardo stated that what he is pushing on with the university system is that you can raise retention, but in doing so you will end up eliminating the people that most need the education. He has shared these issues with President Erskine Bowles. A group has been formed and they are looking at what it means to have a decent retention rate given the nature of the differences of the institution.
Looking at retention rates and graduation rates will be the next thing and also they are looking at questions of efficiencies. Is the institution efficient in its operations? This is not going to end and having a performance based model as opposed to an enrollment based model is a likely outcome of the process. He believes the outcome is that the system will adopt some form of performance based funding, but probably not in the form of what we saw initially. The role of UNC Tomorrow plays no role if everything is around retention. Other issues were touched on. Dr. Bardo stated that WCU is continuing to raise admissions standards. We had already internally been moving admissions standards up and retention up. He anticipates the retention rate will go up a bit next year because the quality of our freshman class went up a lot.
Comment: As an institution gets subjected to this kind of standard and measurements, it will flow down to departments. If the department says okay if you don’t have a certain level of math or science, we don’t let you in the program. The down side to that is if you do exactly what you said, those people that are questionable will never get a chance, by hard work or by application. You have a significant number of them. If you go to this standard, you would not mess with them because that would ruin your numbers.
Response from Dr. Bardo: Of course, and that’s the downside. That’s why I keep pushing, what is the mission you want each school to perform. I don’t doubt that it is in the best interest of the state to have some schools that have a retention rate of 85% 86%, maybe 15 to 20 percent of the people that apply have SATs on the 2-part scale at 12-something, but that isn’t good public policy to have every school there and so the issue I keep raising is look at public policy, look at the individual missions of the institutions and then set your standards accordingly. So, if you want us to experiment more with kids that may have some oddities in their backgrounds, but may have some potential, set our standard to account for that. If you want us because of where we are located, there are so many low income people in this area. If you want us to have a high percent of low income people, 28-29% we can tell you what that probably means in terms of retention rate even if we do a good job. And so, set the performance standard according to that. Discussion continued.
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Comment from Melissa Wargo: I was just going to piggy back on something that you said, I’ve been asked frequently about the Observer article that stated Western was one of only three schools in our system that did not meet our retention target hence we would be slapped with restrictions in our enrollment. That was actually an erroneous finding in that article because we in fact met our target and negotiated two years with General Administration exceeded it by more than 7 percentage points.
It was the fact that we were slightly below the peer average from our current peer group that we all have problems with that put us in that prescriptive category and I think it’s worth noting because we’ve done a lot of work on campus to improve our retention rate. We should have been applauded for that, but instead we were called out erroneously.
Discussion continued.
Chancellor Bardo next talked about budget. He sent a memo around trying to address questions. He said it is probably the first time he has sent a memo around that said “I don’t know.” This is a new legislature coming in that hasn’t been in power since 1898. We don’t know what this means…they are facing a budget deficit of between 3 – 4 billion dollars and it is doubtful that they know yet what they will do to try to figure that out. He expects that they will still look for a 10% cut and wouldn’t be shocked if it is 10% plus a tuition increase to keep it from being more than 10%. They don’t know yet what the collections will look like. Unemployment is being very stubborn in the state, but we did hear
Black Friday was pretty good and they may have a decent holiday sales and if they do then it may not be quite as bad as projected right now. They will make their estimates on the budget based on the
April numbers so that’s when we will know for sure. We have to plan for a 10% cut. The third element in this is Tom Ross and what his philosophies are going to be which are unknown at this time. Dr. Bardo is heartened by what he has heard from him and feels his time at Davidson has really helped him understand higher education in a way that is going to be helpful to us.
Chancellor Bardo said that in the spring semester we have to plan as for a 10% cut. What that means is in that early in the spring semester we will call a campus wide meeting where we will share the cuts we’ve had to date, what they look like by division and area, generally what 10% cuts would mean overall by area. From there we will need a lot of conversations about how we move forward. He has not heard anything from the governor about rescissions this year, so it appears we are looking at a
July 1 budget situation. He has asked Provost Stanford to work on getting web page up so that as judgments are made about what cuts are made where, they will be posted so everybody can see what everybody else is doing. There’s no reason for any secrets. As always, he will try to minimize layoffs which Dr. Bardo stated would be detrimental beyond anything else. We don’t have the authority to use furloughs as an institution so they will not be used unless instructed to do so. This is something the president controls, not the individual institution. The basic rule of thumb though is that it is better to use some furlough and not lay people off than to go ahead and take away jobs or take away whole areas of the university.
Comment: …if the governor mandates a furlough is that decision made on a campus by campus basis?
Response from Chancellor Bardo: When the governor mandates it, everyone will do X days. Or everybody above this salary will…We can manage it in terms of do we do it so that you get an extra day or you were going to have to take a vacation day at the holidays so you take it as a furlough day, those kinds of things.
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Comment: So, in terms of everyone who makes below $30,000 doesn’t have to take it?
Response from Chancellor Bardo: That would be from the governor. She has the right to delegate it to the agency heads. I think there was a lot of interest in the legislature last time to not furlough anyone under $30,000 income. Whether or not she follows that, I haven’t heard anything yet. Please don’t leave going oh; the Chancellor thinks we’re going to be furloughed. I honestly don’t know anything about that. I do believe that any dollars that we don’t spend this year will be swept from our accounts and we will still have to cut the same amount. It isn’t a matter of what if we don’t spend it, will we still have to cut? I don’t believe they will do that. They’ll sweep it and we will still have to cut the same. That’s what has been done historically.
Comment: Can you explain mathematically, the total state budget is $19 billion or so and they are talking about a 3.5 to 4 billion deficit. If you do the math that turns out to be more like 20% than 10% and we are a huge part of the budget.
Response from Chancellor Bardo: Well, we are actually not as big a part of the budget as you might expect. UNC is 3.5 billion, something of that order, it is a good piece, but what they have tended to do historically is undercut education if at all possible and then to replace some of the cuts with tuition. I think it possible that what we will see is 10% plus a tuition increase to offset a 15-18% cut. I would not be shocked to see a 500, 600, 700 dollar tuition increase to cover that difference.
Historically Republicans have favored user fees over taxes.
Linda Stanford interjected that December 8 th
at 11:00 a.m. will be an open forum for faculty and staff.
Chuck Wooten will talk at the forum about our fee increase that was approved by the Board and they will explain the cuts that were made last year and answer any questions about the current budget situation that faculty and staff might have about how we are going to be dealing with this. Additional forums may be planned.
Erin said she was unaware that today the Board of Trustees were looking at the proposal for fee increases that had gone by the student government association and passed, but they had asked for additional information and wanted additional time to consider it. They didn’t pass it at the board today, but will be meeting next week.
Dr. Bardo: We’re asking for 6.5% for tuition and an average of 6.5% for fees. That is the Board of
Governor’s policy cap. That’s what we can ask for. The reason for asking is that I do believe we are going to see a 10% cut and we can use this money to at least offset that cut and try to address at least the most critical problems that emerge and we know what we are dealing with…
Erin: I explained to the Board of Trustees and William Frady from Staff Senate expressed the same thing that we are concerned and there is the discussion of looking for jobs and we feel that open conversation and public information is going to help at least give people accurate information and to see whether their fears are founded or not. We’ve heard that your colleagues are concerned and we are going to make this as open a process as possible.
Dr. Bardo added that before anyone applies for anything to look at news in other states, there are a lot of other states in as bad or worse shape than NC.
Comment: Has there been any discussion at the state level…I heard that Chapel Hill in particular had lost a few, at least, really talented faculty to other universities.
Dr. Bardo: There is concern about that. What’s happening is that a lot of the private universities are not experiencing this; they don’t rely on state money and so they’re cherry picking some of the
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Chapel Hill faculty. The salaries that they can offer are pretty substantial and so there is conversation.
Erskine has raised the question about faculty salaries. That we can’t just keep holding the salaries constant and not expect to lose people. I’m also concerned about staff salaries. Our staff salaries are low and health care keeps going up. While inflation isn’t giant, it keeps going up…I think right now where people are being lost is generally cherry picking from private schools…
Dr. Bardo added that the goal is to keep everyone involved and to share everything we can. Every division is being hit so it’s not limited to any one area. We are asking that no one do an across the board cut. Across the board cuts make no sense. In the end, everybody gets an arm cut off which means you can’t do anything so better to prioritize and say this is the most important thing we do and this is not quite as important so we will do less of that. I know the Board of Trustees is really big on that. I certainly believe it is the only way to manage.
Comment: The question I keep hearing from faculty is: Is the process going to be the same across colleges & divisions?
Response from Dr. Bardo: No, it won’t be.
Comment: I think that is a source of frustration that I hear from faculty…
Response from Dr. Bardo: I wouldn’t expect the process would be the same because you are not dealing with the same set of questions. If I’m looking at Adm. and Finance, they’re dealing with maintenance staff for example. The way in which you cut maintenance staff wouldn’t be the same as you might say in your department, such as “which of the specialties can one of us pick up”. You just don’t follow the same process. If wouldn’t be meaningful to follow the same process…
As far as different colleges we’ve never really intervened at the college level in terms of process. If there is a strong feeling by the Senate that we do need to have common processes across colleges, we can do that, but each college has such a different culture that I don’t really think that-I’ve never felt like that was something that I wanted to take on doing. If it is something of interest, we’ll talk about how to make that work.
Linda added that some colleges have gone through the process or are in the midst of it already and they’re developing. We’ve given recommendations to colleges about program prioritization and tomorrow have a 4 hour meeting to talk more about these processes, but some colleges have gone through it already and for them to go through another process wouldn’t make sense. But there has to be discussion across colleges about priorities in programs because so many courses taught in Arts and
Sciences compliment health professions or engineering or required courses…when you start talking about this everything is connected. We have a separate administrative prioritization process that I’ve implemented with the academic service units and if finance and administration wants to use that process they are welcome to it, but the colleges are autonomous in setting up their own process.
Dr. Bardo: I understand why it would be frustrating because you don’t actually know what the other colleges are doing, but one of the reasons of setting up the forums is to share what people have done.
A lot of it is just the knowledge of what’s happened…
Dr. Bardo said the number one thing he would encourage… is to simplify, simplify, and simplify your curriculum. I don’t mean make it easier on your student’s to graduate, that’s not what I’m saying. Simplify your curriculum…what’s the core of your program? Make is so that you focus on the core of your program. If you have 4, 5 or 6 different tracks in your major, do you really need those and if you simplify does that mean you don’t have to hire a bunch of temporary and part time people? Look at the number of hours toward degree, again, another way of saving some money and saving some temporary hires. We have programs, I’ve been looking at Chapel Hill’s webpage, and I
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think it’d be hard to argue that Chapel Hill doesn’t have on the average pretty good undergraduate programs. You might want to look at your programs compared to theirs. I’m not picking on them…pick five others and look at them. But look at them and see if they line up or not. I think at
Western we tend to be very requirement heavy and it made sense when we had a lot of kids that were academically marginal; you do try to give them a blueprint on how to get done. But are still blueprinting at a level where maybe it’s counterproductive. Those are ways you can act without injuring what you are trying to accomplish overall. Look at the number of hours required for the degree itself. We have moved a lot of degrees to 120 hours and that’s very useful, but there are still a lot on campus that are 123 – 128 hours. Is that really necessary in your area? I understand there are some areas, engineering or nursing, that you have to do that for accreditation, I understand, but can you really justify it as something that is necessary? We’re not trying to fill up their heads with everything possible.” Discussion continued.
COUNCIL
REPORTS________________________________________________________________________
Academic Policy and Review Council/Christopher Hoyt:
All curriculum items were approved unanimously by voice vote.
Chris reported it was brought to the attention of APRC that the Honors College has a forum to replace liberal studies course requirements that only goes through the Honors College. Concerns were raised since this does not follow the normal path that other students go through that has considerable checks that go with it. The APRC sent it to the Liberal Studies Committee which tried to track down who had approved the form originally. No formal approval was ever discovered. It was discussed in the
APRC in 2004 according to the minutes found. It had been discussed, but did not show any action taken and to the best of our knowledge the records don’t show that it went before the full Senate.
Given the concerns about the nature of the forum and given that quite a few people tried to track down when this had been approved and by whom and that nothing was found, the APRC thought we should rescind this form and the Honors College may resubmit and go through the process again or if those approvals can be found then we can reverse this decision.
Beth Lofquist added that Brian Railsback had found some email exchanges which showed there is some question if something was approved by APRC back in 2004, whether it had to go through
Senate for action or could it be implemented without going through Senate.
Brian added that he put together as best he could by going through emails a timeline of what happened. Brian explained that he went through the approval process as he was informed to do. The proposal was submitted to several people including the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, the
Senior Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, and the Chair of the Faculty Senate. It was submitted to the APRC on October 20, 2004 and Brian came before the committee where they had considerable discussion before the APRC approved it. Brian was informed that it next needed to go to the Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs for approval and he sent an email to Kyle Carter asking if this is what he needed for approval and Kyle responded, yes, but that he needed to hear from the
Chair of the APRC. On November 19 th
, Brian submitted changes to the catalog and found email exchanges with Nancy Carden as she was getting ready to proof the catalog referencing the fact that it
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had been approved by the APRC and by the Vice Chancellor. Brian reiterated that he was following the procedures that were laid out for him in good faith.
Discussion continued.
A vote was held on tabling the motion until further follow up can be done.
HAND VOTE ON TABLING THE RESOLUTION TO RESCIND THE HONORS COLLEGE
LS COURSE REPLACEMENT FORM FOR HONORS STUDENTS:
Yes: Majority
Abstained: 0
The Vote Passed.
Comment: Did Senate ever pass this?
Comment: There was no vote.
Comment: So, we have to assume it is passed and it is legal forum.
Comment: No, it’s tabled and at the moment, Larry Hammer has put a hold on any going through the process until it can be figured out.
Comment from Christopher Hoyt: We could resolve this by resubmitting and sending it to the APRC in the January meeting. We would simply rescind the format as it is, resubmit it and take care of it in
January.
Comment: I agree with that. That is going to be a lot easier than trying to search for emails from six years ago.
Comment: We just voted to table this haven’t we? -Which didn’t allow continued discussion which is unfortunate because there are other alternatives to tabling it.
Comment: Can we withdraw the motion to table?
Comment: That would have to be reconsider the matter already disposed of which requires vote for the majority to see if we want to continue discussion at this time.
Comment: Assuming we can vote to re-continue the discussion and non-table…
The motion was made and seconded to reverse the earlier passed motion to table.
VOICE VOTE ON THE REVERSING THE PREVIOUS VOTE TO TABLE THE MOTION:
Yes: Majority
No: 0
Abstained: 2
The Vote Passed.
Discussion was had around whether this would affect any students being able to graduate. The opinion was that it would not affect anyone. Concern was expressed about people graduating in May that may have signed up for classes based on this practice. Everyone agreed that this decision would not penalize any student for an action we’ve taken already. Only for anything going forward, the rules may be changed. For example currently students registered for the spring everything that would have been approved under the LS form should be able to go through. This process may be changed as of the summer or fall.
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Discussion continued.
Comment: Would it be appropriate to bring this back to the APRC for re-consideration unless something is found that can document the formal approval?
Discussion took place around sending the resolution back to APRC versus tabling.
Comment from Christopher Hoyt: To be clear…if we don’t come up with a formal approval – we’re still undertaking that process of coming up with something- if we don’t come up with anything, the idea is you would be asking us to reconsider it brand new. So, the current APRC would look at the form and consider whether or not to move it to the Senate for a full vote either in its current form or possibly with modifications.
It was confirmed that as of right now no new forms are being processed, by the registrar’s office.
Comment: Someone should confirm that student’s aren’t registered for classes in the Spring. At what point did we…
Comment from Christopher: It didn’t reverse any decisions that have already been made. This is a more cumbersome form that the students can fill out that has greater faculty oversight rather than being simply contained within the Honors College exclusively. It requires more signatures and earlier action by the students. So, if the students are made aware of it now, then they would not be hindered from graduating because of this action.
Discussion continued.
Comment: Given how rare this is being used, it’s not an issue. Seven times in seven years.
It was confirmed any forms already in process would not be held up.
Motion was made and seconded to send this back to APRC.
At this point, the Staff Senate Chair who had recently arrived was able to deliver an External Report on Staff Senate:
Staff Senate/William Frady:
Staff Senate has worked on several recent events.

Had a table at Employee Appreciation Day and raised $120 donations for the scholarship fund

Worked to collect food for the Food for Kids Backpack program – collected 405 lbs of food and toiletries

Moved forward with Employee Emergency Assistance Fund – to provide confidential financial assistance to employees in time so crisis. William asked that the Senate look at this fund carefully. It is not unique to staff – it is for staff and faculty. They are asking the Board of Trustees to also provide donations to help get the fund off the ground.

Chancellors Search – they have participated heavily providing staff feedback through William
Frady as the representative from Staff Senate to the committee.

Staff members are concerned about budget cuts and the staff senate has tried to provide information to dispel rumors.
Comment: Do you have a website for the assistance fund?
Response: We don’t have it set up. If you go to the Foundation website and look for the fund name you can get the form for starting contributions. It is the WCU Employee Assistance Fund. Currently, you would need to write the name of the fund onto the contribution form.
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It is possible to have auto draft from paychecks or make a onetime donation.
Comment: For those people who might need to benefit from the fund, will it be announced at some point in time once legal has approved everything?
Response: We are hoping to send a letter through the campaign to the campus talking about the fund and asking for donations to get it started.
Report from Wendy Ford, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Dean Ford gave a few highlights of the College of Arts and Sciences which has a traditional structure similar to other colleges of arts and sciences with humanities, sciences and social sciences all in one liberal arts oriented college. There are eleven departments as well as a number of interdisciplinary programs and inter college programs in particular with the College of Education and Allied
Professions.
Arts and Sciences is perhaps dissimilar relative to other colleges in that Arts and Sciences has a core service mission in that they consider themselves the core foundation of the college for the university setting in that we have a foundational liberal arts disciplines. By definition these are the foundational disciplines for a university education. Arts and Sciences colleges tend to play the primary role in general education and tend to offer a lot of courses that compliment or contribute to majors in programs in other colleges.
About 67% of the student credit hours and course offerings per semester are service courses. Two thirds of course offerings are service courses instead of courses just for our majors.
The service mission is embraced as what they do as a core liberal arts oriented college. They also have their own programs including graduate programs. Within the programs they have growing enrollment across the majors and by 4.6% this year for all majors.
Biology, Anthropology, Forensic Science and Computer Science were the programs experiencing the most enrollment growth in the order given. There were several others with high enrollment growth.
They have a challenge in that the funding is not matched to the growth in the programs. So when the institution grows in general they get hit on their service offerings because they are growing the general ed and we are one of the universities that are not allowed to grow generally so our general ed offerings may not grow in coming years, but it is not anticipated that the majors within A&S will shrink.
Dean Ford said they are doing their enrollment management and are working on managing their numbers to match their budget. At some point they probably will move forward with implementing some philosophy associated with matching enrollments and some relationship with matching enrollments and funding and staff and faculty.
They are excited over interdisciplinary programs. She mentioned the Forensic Science program is now over 100 students and in its third year and the Environmental Science program now has over 50 students. The International Studies program was introduced this fall. To sign up the International
Studies program a student would also have to major in another area. For example, International
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Studies and Business or I/S and History so that students are combining areas of knowledge to get a very global based background. Cherokee Studies and International were both mentioned.
As the College of Arts and Sciences reviewed their college and looked at samples of engagement they identified four themes that they embraced over a year ago: celebrating our cultural heritage, stewardship of our natural environment, outreach to our surrounding communities and support to local schools.
Collegial Review Council/Vicki Szabo:
Resolution 1: Changes to Faculty Handbook Section 4.08G was seen and approved at the last meeting and a big deal was made about how we wanted the department’s decision to be the decision in post tenure review and that the dean just reviewed it. It was later brought up that the usage of the word review was very liberal and so they proposed to change the language to be decision as in department’s decision throughout the section.
HAND VOTE ON THE RESOLUTION TO CHANGE THE LANGUAGE IN 4.08G.
Yes: Majority
No: 0
Abstained: 1
The Vote Passed.
Resolution #2: Changes to Faculty Handbook 4.03 – 4.08
The Faculty Handbook currently uses the phrase departmental criteria when in fact we have clearer language than departmental criteria. “Departmental or department criteria” is to be replaced with
“DCRD” or “departmental collegial review document.”
HAND VOTE ON THE RESOLUTION TO CHANGE THE LANGUAGE IN 4.03- 4.08G.
Yes: Majority
No: 0
Abstained: 0
The Vote Passed.
Resolution #4 UCRC charge and DCRD
No vote was necessary. This is already done.
Faculty Affairs Council / Chris Cooper, Chair
No report due to time constraints.
Rules Committee/Cheryl Waters-Tormey:
No report due to time constraints.
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OTHER
REPORTS________________________________________________________________________
Old Business:
No report due to time constraints.
New Business:
No report due to time constraints.
SENATE REPORTS____________________________________________________________
Administrative Report/Provost Linda Stanford:
Time was running short and a short discussion from Linda touched on topics briefly. Linda mentioned that Chancellor Bardo had gone through some of the things. She mentioned the deans are going through program prioritization; there are a lot of things happening. It is a work in progress and they are trying to go through and generating the data we need to review.
Chair Report/Erin McNelis:
Erin reminded everyone about the upcoming Faculty Staff Forum on the Budget.
The meeting adjourned at 5:00 p.m.
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